Carry That Weight
by amerikanka
Summary: Bad dreams keep more than one person up at night, and old scars never really fade.


When she woke up screaming in the middle of the night, Seamus wished he could take all of her demons away. She was shaking in his arms as he pressed kisses to her hair, trying to comfort her. "It was him again," she said, tears threatening her voice. "He was tearing me apart..."

"Shh, Lav. He's gone."

"We don't know that, we don't."

Seamus knew that when she said that, there was no consoling her. What he never said, but wondered if he should, was that if Greyback ever showed his face around Lavender Brown again, he'd have one hell of an irate Irishman to deal with.

When he woke up shaking, Lavender pretended not to feel it half the time. He didn't like it when he was showing 'weakness,' as he called it. She called it feeling grief, and it was something they argued about. When she couldn't ignore it though, she sat up and leaned her head over his shoulder, placing her cheek by his. "Seamus?"

"It's nothing. Go back to sleep."

Half the time she obliged. It seemed like it was always half with them. They always got through it, because it was so rarely problems with each other. It was always memories. When she talked to her muggle-born mother about it, Amelia Brown told her about something called Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, that soldiers often got when they returned home. The people who had fought in the final battle were nothing if not soldiers, and she had done things she regretted. She had been in situations that she was sure she was going to die in, and she knew he had been in worse.

But Lavender still hated it, still hated that they both couldn't sleep through the night. At least one of them woke up nearly every night, and while she wouldn't trade Seamus for the world, she wished he didn't have nightmares. She wished she didn't wake him up with hers. He never told her what they were, leaving her to piece together fragments of his mutterings if she woke up before he did. They were usually about Dean.

Sometimes she would wake up early and go make a cup of tea, leaving him sleeping as peacefully as he could on their bed. She would stare out at the morning breaking across the London skyline and wish to hard it hurt that everything would just go back to normal. They had survived where others didn't, but that didn't make them okay.

When Seamus would wake up with Lavender not beside him in their bed, he couldn't ever stifle his immediate panic. Logically, he knew that she was fine, but he had survived on his instincts for a year and it wasn't easy becoming normal again. She was always somewhere close and he could always feel his heart slowing back down as she smiled at him, a weary one that shadowed her eyes. "Morning," she said. It was never 'good morning' because a night without sleep made for poor mornings. They never asked how the other slept either, because both knew the answer.

"Hey," he said, going over to give her a kiss. He could never quite get enough of her and she loved the feelings that he evoked in her—when he was around her she felt treasured and priceless. It was a feeling she seldom had and she loved it, and him.

"Tea?" she asked.

When he nodded, she motioned towards the counter. "It's already there." A cup of steaming Irish Breakfast tea which he used to be teased mercilessly for stood on the counter, black as midnight, just the way he liked it. He retrieved it and sat on the couch with her, not wanting to go to work but knowing that he had to. She had a soft glow in the morning light that he cherished, despite the exhaustion clear in her face.

"Did I wake you up?" he asked.

"No," she replied. He couldn't even tell if she was lying—either she wasn't or she'd gotten better at it. "Really," she said defensively, and then he knew she was.

"I'm sorry."

She didn't try to deny his apology and he felt even worse.

When she fell asleep on their couch later that night after they were both back from work, he didn't wake her before he went to sleep. Covering her with a blanket, he padded quietly into their room. He didn't want to wake her if he didn't have to. It wasn't that he enjoyed sleeping apart from her—he hated it—but she needed her sleep.

He woke up biting back a yell, then blinked as quiet dark eyes looked at him. She slipped under the covers and sat in front of him, running her hand through his hair. "Don't shut me out, Shay," she breathed, tracing her thumb across his face. She only called him 'Shay' when she was really worried. "Don't put up walls that I can't break."

"You don't deserve this, Lav."

"What are you saying?" _Don't be saying what I think you're saying..._

"I keep waking you up."

"I wake you up too."

"But you have a reason."

She spoke right on the heels of his comment. "You watched your best friend die, you _have_ a reason, Seamus."

He withdrew from her hand a few inches, his brow furrowing. "I didn't tell you that."

"You..." Lavender swallowed. "No, you didn't. But you talk in your sleep sometimes."

He swore, the curse hanging on the air long after he'd closed his mouth, tainting the air with vulgarity much stronger than he normally used. "I'm sorry." He didn't know if he was apologizing for swearing so strongly or for everything he did wrong.

"There's nothing to apologize for. Look, we're not who we were before all... this." She gestured vaguely at the world. "I miss the little girl I used to be, who didn't know when to stop dreaming, who believed in a world where anything was possible and that her Daddy would protect her from all the bad things that could get her. I miss her, but I know I'm not her anymore. I can't be. While I wish you wouldn't wake up from dreams at four in the morning, it's not because you wake me up too. It's because I can't do anything about it, and I _hate_ that." Lavender paused and sighed. "I wish I could take your demons away so you wouldn't have to carry them."

Seamus closed his eyes, then leaned his head forward, pressing his forehead against hers. He'd thought that about her that very morning. She still had scars around her eye from where Greyback attacked her, and he knew each bite mark, each _human_ bite mark that was on her shoulder. The tears that ran up her leg and the thousand tiny scars that crossed her skin. He knew how her war wounds marked her body better than he knew his own, and something told him the opposite was true for her. She ran her fingers across the long white rent in his neck, proving him right.

And he knew how she got them, but she didn't know about his. "Let me in, Shay. You've helped me so much, so damn much—let me do the same for you."

"Dean jumped in front of Hannah Abbot. He took the curse for her." Seamus blurted out, then closed his eyes tightly. He could still see it clearly, and in his dreams it was worse. In his dreams, Dean screamed his name as he died. Seamus felt a sob well up and gritted his teeth; he did not cry, Seamus Finnegan never cried. He released the breath he didn't realize he had been holding and drew another shakily.

When he opened his eyes she was still looking at him. Starlight and moonlight poured through the window and fell onto her hair, turning the blond to silver and not for the first time, her beauty struck him, scarred or not. The moonlight illuminated the marks on her face clearer than the daylight could. He leaned back against the headboard of their bed and slumped down. "He was my best friend, and I hadn't seen him for a year, and then he just died. Like..." Seamus snapped his fingers. "Like that."

Lavender looked out the window, not quite touching him. "Remember at the beginning of the year, when Neville stood up to the She-Carrow? I thought he was immortal then. All through the year, you and him and Ginny and Luna and Ernie—to us you were the immortal ones. Sure, you got hurt and we would fix you up, but you never seemed scared of anything, and you always had a plan, and you always knew what to do. I was there when Ernie died, and even though we were in the middle of a fight for our lives, it was still a shock to me to realize that he wasn't superhuman, and that he _did_ die. That he could. Did you feel like that about Dean, because you hadn't seen him in so long?"

The question was sudden, and Seamus answered before thinking. "Yeah. I knew he'd been on the run and I guess I just assumed... if he'd made it that far, he could last the battle." He offered a weak shrug. "I was wrong."

"Seamus..."

"I know Dean wouldn't want me living like this I know that. But..."

"You regret not doing something more?"

His eyes caught hers quickly. "How'd you know?"

"Because Susan still cries for Ernie. She showed up at my office a few weeks ago, completely a mess. I had to take off early to calm her down. It was the anniversary of their first date. I was thinking all the next week, replaying the battle in my mind and wondering if there was something I could have done, something that would have saved him."

"Was there something you could have done?" He was hesitant in asking the question, because he wasn't sure if he wanted to know the answer or not. He wasn't sure if he wanted to make her say it.

She bit her lip before answering, then turned and looked at him, eyes full of unshed tears that made him want to take her in his arms and make the hurt go away. "I don't know. There were a few moments when, if I'd acted differently, or pulled him a different direction, maybe..."

"Have you talked to Susan about this?"

"Have you talked to Dean's family? At all?" He couldn't tell if she was disappointed in him because she most likely already knew the answer. In a way, he didn't like that she could read him so easily, because it made it hard to keep things from her. In a way, it elated him, because he never thought that he'd be able to say that a girl like her was his. And in another way, it made him feel guilty at times, because he knew he couldn't read her as well as she could him.

"No."

"There's your answer, then."

Seamus spoke again after a long pause. "Are you going to?"

"How could I? And what if there was something I could have done, how could I tell her that?" Her voice was small and still on the verge of tears. She blinked and they began to fall, cascading down her cheeks. He hated seeing her cry but he was just grateful that he had never caused any of her tears. He hoped.

"I don't know, Lav." He motioned to her and she lay down next to him, her head on his stomach. He could feel her tears against his skin and he brushed the next few away with his thumb.

They stayed like that as the dawn broke and her crying stopped, only moving when Seamus's alarm clock buzzed. "I need to get ready for work."

"I'll make breakfast." Lavender had stopped apologizing for crying in front of him months ago, and he was glad of it. It wasn't her fault. In Seamus's mind, nothing was her fault besides occasionally burning the toast. She turned to leave and he stopped her by hugging her from behind. Without hesitation she turned around in his arms and gripped him tightly back. "Thank you for telling me," she said softly into his ear.

"I should have told you months ago."

"But what's done is done. We've all got our scars, Shay."

Just because they had survived didn't mean they were okay. But they would be. Seamus let Lavender go and scanned the room for a robe to wear to work, steeling himself for the day. They pressed on and carried each other. They would be all right in the end.

* * *

I'm quickly becoming addicted to one-shots. This could be a bad thing... Written for the PostSecret Challenge at the Harry Potter Fanfiction Challenges forum.


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